Ace Movie Review: How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

How To Lose A Guy In 10 DaysDon’t lose any sleep over missing thisBy Rachel Deahl

Fashion magazines and romantic comedies have a lot in common: they’re both marketed almost exclusively to women and often feature the same repackaged stories over and over again. Given this fact, it’s quite appropriate that the heroine of How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days works at the fictitious Composure Magazine, since the end result of this flop is about as enjoyable and informative as a snippet on manicures or orgasms that you might find nestled in the pages of Cosmo.

Trolling the ever-familiar territory of gender wars, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days pits ambitious Manhattan journalist Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) against ad man Benjamin Barry (Matthew McConaughey) in an all-too-familiar battle of the sexes between star-crossed lovers. Eager to dig her teeth into some “real” stories and start writing about “things that matter, like politics,” Andie agrees to do devote her monthly column to a piece about the mistakes women inadvertently make that drive men away. Elsewhere in the naked city, advertising executive Ben takes a bet that he can convince any woman to fall in love with him, in order to win a new diamond campaign at his firm. So, wouldn’t you know, the two schemers get paired up with each other, each set on conflicting goals.

What ensues is a predictable onslaught of gags in which Hudson’s irresistible sweetheart turns herself into a manic, psychotic stalker in order to send the ever-amenable McConaughey packing. Beginning by dogging him with irksome behavior (demanding a Diet Coke in the closing seconds of a Knicks game and buying him Burberry button-downs), Hudson’s character quickly ditches the light approach and goes for a more brazenly insane one. Here she succumbs to speaking to her man in baby talk and carting over photo albums full of cg-images of their children. Of course, everything hits rock bottom when the swinging bachelor opens his medicine cabinet to see it stuffed with tampons and, gasp, Vagisil. Can it get any worse?

Like a Seinfeld storyline without the benefit of the humor, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days works its mildly inventive premise for the approximately 10 funny minutes it offers up. Running on fumes the rest of the time, the abuse finally gives way to the canned romance sequence (complete with bicycle ride) and the final blow out in which the lovers realize they’ve been lying to each other but also really do care. Finally, without enough star presence or chemistry from its leads, How to Lose a Guy doesn’t have the staying power to hold your attention.

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